Okay, get ready for another bout of childish namecalling: pansy. First off, I didn’t call you stupid in that post, I said your OP was stupid if you care to read carefully enough. Second, this is the pit, not GD. Ad hominen attacks are par for the course (or at least it should be and once was), but even then it was, “some stupid liberals.” Combined with your offense over the move of a phrase from “war” to “struggle,” Chefguy , on the whole, I think you just might be a bit too sensitive.
Why, yes. Because the Administration’s previous “mistake” or “lack of sophistication” or intemperate “rhetoric” has had serious negative consequences for our policy and our reputation worldwide, in addition to gratuitously smearing and impugning the loyalty and competence of the people who objected to it.
And nobody in the Administration, or among its defenders in the punditry, seems to have even the tenth-of-a-nutsack required to actually admit this. Instead, they keep coyly flicking it away as a mere “realignment”, a “toning down”, a “move of a phrase”, a “rapprochement” that ought to make the liberals happy and inspire them to tactfully keep quiet about the havoc wreaked by the earlier policy.
Bullshit. They are going to get called on the harm they’ve done, and they can’t expect to avoid it by flip-flopping and then acting all innocent and puzzled about why we’re still mad. They know what they’ve done, and if they had any balls they’d admit it and apologize for it.
It kills me to ruin your rose colored view of the world, but the fact of the matter is that modern politicians don’t apologize. For anything, ever, and especially not over issues of semanitcs like war vs. struggle. Kerry never apologized for signing on to give Bush the power to invade Iraq. Clinton never apologized to blowing up a Kenyan aspirin factory or other missteps in the course of the fight against Al Quaeda. And these are clear diametric choices as opposed to choosing between synonyms. You might as well start bitching about him wearing white socks after labor day, you aren’t going to get an apology, end of story. You can have a hissy fit about past phrasing choices all you like, or you can continue to push for substantiative policy changes that you favor.
Seriously, though, since virtually every decision out of this administration has been either staggeringly incompetent or totally venal, when they seem to actually be doing something smart and/or moral, it only makes sense to view it with a huge dose of skepticism.
As other posters have noted, this assertion is simply false. Even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t give a pass to all the conservative commentators and other non-politicians who have been cheerleaders for the Administration’s “war” rhetoric.
Idealistic, unrealistic twaddle. (And you accuse me of holding “rose-colored views”!) This very subject illustrates, for the zillionth time, just how indifferent this Administration is to anybody “pushing for substantive policy changes” that they don’t happen to agree with already. Unless their own dicks get caught in the wringer of popular scorn and they’re forced to change course while pretending they aren’t.
It has been evident for a long time that the only way to get this Administration’s attention is to call them out loudly and clearly when they fuck up or flip-flop. They do not cooperate; they do not compromise; they will only cave, and then only when their microscopic balls are being held to the fire of negative public opinion. If they don’t like that particular style of opposition policy, they have only themselves to blame for making it necessary.